


Drive

by ciaan



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-17
Updated: 2009-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-03 04:31:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ciaan/pseuds/ciaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Man's best friend is his car.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drive

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by kinetikatrue and beckaandzac. Originally posted November 2006. Some references to teenage sexuality.

Dean counts the trees through the car window. They're driving somewhere he's never been and each new tree appears and disappears quicker than he can get to know it. He looks up at the ceiling instead and traces the patterns on it again. Dean knows everything about the car. He spends all his time here, and it's the thing that doesn't go away, even more solid than his family. Dad's face is harder now, and he never smiles. Sammy grows bigger every day before Dean's eyes. In the back, next to the baby seat, are bags of salt and charms, because no one sits there anymore.

He learns to read on maps spread over the dashboard. The real places never look like the map, but when Dean looks at a map, the places are all still there all the time, and they don't fade away in the rearview mirror as Dad scowls and clenches his hands on the wheel. Dean can't make his way through sentences yet, but he can follow the lines on a map, tell the difference between an interstate and a local road, tell where the exit ramps and overpasses are, tell how far it is from Lawrence to anywhere.

The car sings Dean to sleep at night the way his mother used to. He lays his head in the perfect spot where the seat back dents down beneath him and rides through the calming rhythm, knowing that when he opens his eyes the patterns on the ceiling will still be the same even though the view outside won't be.

***

Dean drives the car for the first time long before he expects to, when his dad is injured, arm broken and blood slicking the leather of the front passenger seat. Dean fumbles with the key as Dad barks instructions, Sammy clinging to the collar of his shirt, chin trembling.

He's sat on Dad's lap before on slow back roads, holding the steering wheel while Dad does everything else, but when the car purrs to life beneath Dean's hands he's unprepared for the feel of it. Dad's orders are buried under the vibration of the engine thrumming through Dean's body and the rhythm of wheels on asphalt as they begin to move.

The car sings Dean a new song, no longer the old lullaby, and he answers her. He presses the gas and they go faster and faster down the open road.

***

Dean loses his virginity in the backseat of the car, parked in the far dark corner of a motel lot, past the girl's curfew. He knows she's easy, her legs opening for anyone like an unlocked door. He also knows he's the weird kid at school, the one everyone stares sidelong at and no one will talk to. So he takes what he can get.

His hands scrabble over the leather and vinyl beneath him, passing the burn mark from the salamander in Chapel Hill, the stitches from a knifing by a petulant Sammy, then one, two, three inches more and he's digging his fingers over the edge of the seat, clutching it, pressing his elbows down. He lowers his face to her breasts and shuts his eyes as she guides him between her thighs.

Dean rocks his hips and goes somewhere else new again and it's better than he ever could have imagined it would be.

***

Dean sleeps in the car a lot now. Sammy's as gone as spilt milk, and Dad's off for longer and longer in his new truck, leaving Dean to hunt on his own. Beds seem colder and rougher when they aren't Cassie's. So Dean kicks the knife and the gun under the front seat and curls up in a sleeping bag in back, out on some country mile without any lights. He stares up at the ceiling and traces the patterns there, breath frosting in the air.

The car's been coughing lately, and he can't figure out why no matter how many times he lifts the hood. He doesn't want to think too much about the possibilities. He strokes her as often as he can, and he whispers to her that she's the only girl he needs. Come on, baby, come on, he says, as the engine struggles to turn over in the cold morning.

At the next garage he sees Dean buys her some premium motor oil to cheer her up. They keep driving on.


End file.
